 | |
Type of site | Web portal |
|---|---|
| Owner | SK Communications |
| Created by | Empas Corporation |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | 1998 |
| Current status | Sold and merged withNate |
| Empas | |
| Hangul | 엠파스 |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization | Empaseu |
| McCune–Reischauer | Emp'asŭ |
Empas (Korean: 엠파스) was one of the popular totalinternetsearch tools andweb portal sites inSouth Korea.[1]
The service was launched in 1998 by Knowledge Plant Corporation (지식발전소), which changed its name to Empas Corporation in 2004. The nameEmpas is a combination ofe-media andcompass.[2] It merged withNate in 2009.
Empas was one of South Korea's most popular web search engines, and competed withDaum, Nate, andNaver. Empas was the second most popular web portal in the country from 2000 to 2001, by unique page view. Since the dominance ofNaver started in 2003, however, the market share of Empas declined, and by late 2005, it had fallen into the fifth place amongst the South Korean web portals. In 2006, aiming to check its main competition Naver's rapid expansion, SK Communications (which owned South Korea's popular social networking websiteCyworld) acquired Empas on 19 October 2006.
With the reorganisation of SK Communications's business fields, Empas was merged with Nate.com, which was the original web portal of SK Communications, and became Nate on 1 March 2009.[1]
